HSE Development Programme until 2030

In late March 2026, an official meeting took place between a delegation from HSE University and delegations from Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU); the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; and the Embassy of Vietnam in the Russian Federation. The participants discussed key areas of cooperation that will help strengthen ties not only between the universities, but also between the two countries.

HSE University has hosted a project-based career school organised by the Yandex Cloud Centre for Technologies and Society and the HSE Career Development Centre. The programme was intended for second-to-fourth-year bachelor’s students and first-to-second-year master's students of programmes related to social, technical, and business subjects. The school was aimed at students interested in solving social problems using AI technologies.

Researchers from the HSE Center for Language and Brain used magnetoencephalography to study how the brains of adults and children respond to words during reading. They showed that in children the brain takes longer to process words that are frequently used in everyday speech, while rare words and pseudowords are processed in the same way—slowly and in parts. With age, the system is reorganised: high-frequency words shift to a fast route, whereas new letter combinations are still analysed slowly. The study was published in the journal Psychophysiology.

An international team including researchers from the HSE Faculty of Computer Science has presented KoWit-24, an annotated dataset of 2,700 Russian-language Kommersant news headlines containing wordplay. The dataset enables an assessment of how artificial intelligence detects and interprets wordplay. Experiments with five large language models show that even advanced systems still make mistakes, and that interpreting wordplay is more challenging for them than detecting it. The results were presented at the RANLP conference; the paper is available on Arxiv.org, and the dataset and the code for reproducing the experiments are available on GitHub.

Forbes has published its eighth annual ranking of the best Russian higher education institutions. HSE University took first place. Its leadership was secured, among other factors, by strong support from employers and high performance in the Academic Environment metric.

HSE University has become the leading Russian educational institution by the number of first-place positions in national graduate employment rankings. The rankings are compiled separately for each field of study, taking into account the share of graduates who find employment and their salary levels. The university ranked first in areas such as Mathematics and Mechanics (Master’s level), Computers Science and Engineering (Bachelor’s level), Information Security (Bachelor’s level), Asian and African Studies (Master’s level), Economics and Management (Bachelor’s level), among others.

The Machine Learning in Information Security workshop is being launched as part of a strategic cooperation agreement between the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (HSE MIEM) and Ozon. The programme will train specialists capable of ensuring the security of artificial intelligence systems. Students will study methods for protecting large language models and develop tools aimed at improving the resilience of AI systems to attacks.

The results of the BRICS International School: New Generation, which was held in Delhi, proved that young people have become key participants in the global dialogue. The event brought together 200 young leaders from leading universities and expert centres in India. The programme was organised by the BRICS Expert Council–Russia, based at HSE University, together with the Russian House in New Delhi with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

Scientists at HSE University have investigated the effect of parks on the cognitive and emotional resources of city dwellers. The researchers compared brain electrical activity in 30 participants while they watched videos of walks through parks and along busy highways. The results showed that green urban environments with trees produce a consistent effect across individuals, helping the brain calm down and relax. By contrast, walks along busy streets were found to be distracting. The findings have been published in Scientific Reports.

A delegation from HSE University–St Petersburg has visited partner universities in Vietnam. Read on to discover the opportunities international ties present for scientists and why there is a growing demand for specialists in the economy and culture of Southeast Asia in Russia.